Starting a Novel – Sarah Barry a.k.a Psychic Sarah

So how would a tarot novel start? With The Fool (number 0) would be an obvious place, but the Queen of Swords would surely want to oversee. The Queen of Swords standing above, looking over us all, appraising, noticing, seeing where we fall apart, where we have steeped too long in the tea of ignorance and have forgotten to question why we had poured ourselves a cup of conditioned crap. I would meet the Queen of Swords as a seeker. I want her to notice me and I want to grow well in her company, but I am also aware that she holds the larger experience here. For she has been sitting there with her Sword for centuries now. She has been watching human life arise and fall away and their stories be mistold or completely forgotten. She has been perfecting the art of communication for hundreds of years, since the first tarot deck was drawn into existence. She knows when to speak and she knows when to be silent. Yet it is her silence that unnerves me. How she watches me, gazing so intently that I know that she can see every shitty little ignorant irrelevant thought I’ve ever had. I want to cry like a baby at her feet because I am so small and insignificant in my experience of life while she’s been turned over in hundreds of thousands of tarot readings for hundreds of years by thousands of different storytellers, each with their own way of seeing and breathing and waking and sleeping. I want to stand beside her and pick up my own Sword and turn around to gaze at the world as she does. And see all without getting caught up in the haze that distracts us all. I would focus on the clear, distinct markers on the path – past, present and possible future – and speak to them directly. I would bypass all the silly, irrelevant activities that put a block between me and the understanding of the inescapable entropy of everything. There is much to write about in order to piece my brain and my heart back together so that I can share my music with you. It all starts with the first word.